Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) (originally named Digital Home Working Group [DHWG]) was founded by a group of consumer electronics companies in June 2003 (with Sony in the lead role) to develop and promote a set of interoperability guidelines for sharingdigital media among multimedia devices under the auspice of a certification standard. DLNA works with cable, satellite, and telecom service providers to provide link protection on each end of the data transfer. The extra layer of digital rights management (DRM) security allows broadcast operators to feel good about enabling consumers to share their content on multimedia devices without the risk of piracy.[4][5] As of June 2015[update] the organization claims membership of "more than 200 companies".[3]

The group published its first set of guidelines in June 2004.[2] The guidelines incorporate several existing public standards, including Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) for media management and device discovery and control, and widely used digital media formats and wired and wireless networking standards.[6]

In March 2014, DLNA publicly released the VidiPath Guidelines, originally called "DLNA CVP-2 Guidelines." VidiPath is a set of guidelines developed by DLNA that enables consumers to view subscription TV content on a wide variety of devices including televisions, tablets, phones, Blu-ray players, set top boxes (STBs), personal computers (PCs) and game consoles without any additional intermediate devices from the service provider.

As of October 2015,[7] over 25,000 different device models have obtained "DLNA Certified" status, indicated by a logo on their packaging and confirming their interoperability with other devices.[8] It was estimated that by 2017 over 6 billion DLNA-certified devices, from digital cameras to game consoles and TVs, would be installed in users' homes.[9]

Sony established the DLNA in June 2003 as the Digital Home Working Group, changing its name 12 months later, when the first set of guidelines for DLNA was published.[1] Home Networked Device Interoperability Guidelines v1.5 was published in March 2006 and expanded in October of the same year; the changes included the addition of two new product categories — printers, and mobile devices — as well as an "increase of DLNA Device Classes from two to twelve" and an increase in supported user scenarios related to the new product categories.[1]

Digital Media Player (DMP): find content on digital media servers (DMS) and provide playback and rendering capabilities. Examples include TVs, stereos and home theaters, wireless monitors and game consoles.

Digital Media Renderer (DMR): play content as instructed by a digital media controller (DMC), which will find content from a digital media server (DMS). Examples include TVs, audio/video receivers, video displays and remote speakers for music. It is possible for a single device (e.g. TV, A/V receiver, etc.) to function both as a DMR (receives "pushed" content from DMS) and DMP ("pulls" content from DMS)

There are over nine thousand products on the market that are DLNA Certified.[17] This includes TVs, DVD and Blu-ray players, games consoles, digital media players, photo frames, cameras, NAS devices, PCs, mobile handsets, and more.[18] According to a study from Parks Associates,[9] nearly 3 billion products are on the market in 2014 reaching up to over 7 billion by 2018. Consumers can see if their product is certified by looking for a DLNA logo on the device or by verifying certification through the DLNA Product Search.[19]

As the past president of DLNA pointed out to the Register in March 2009:[23]

The vendors of software are allowed to claim that their software is a DLNA Technology Component if the software has gone through certification testing on a device and the device has been granted DLNA Certification. DLNA Technology Components are not marketed to the consumer but only to industry.

DLNA Interoperability Guidelines allow manufacturers to participate in the growing marketplace of networked devices and are separated into the below sections of key technology components.[24]

In 2005,[31] DLNA began a Software Certification program in order to make it easier for consumers to share their digital media across a broader range of products. DLNA is certifying software that is sold directly to consumers through retailers, websites and mobile application stores. With DLNA Certified software, consumers can upgrade products from within their home networks that may not be DLNA Certified and bring them into their personal DLNA ecosystems. This helps in bringing content such as videos, photos and music stored on DLNA Certified devices to a larger selection of consumer electronics, mobile and PC products.[32]

Asset UPnP (DLNA compatible) from Illustrate. An audio specific UPnP/DLNA server for Windows (including Windows Home Server), QNAP, Apple OS X (Mountain Lion or newer), Debian Linux and Raspberry Pi. Features music library, album art, audio WAVE/LPCM transcoding from a huge range of audio codecs, ReplayGain, support for streaming audio in many formats including lossless Flac, Wav, MP3 and playlists, and a customizable browse tree. Companion products "dBpoweramp CD Ripper" for CD ripping and "dBpoweramp Music Converter" for converting digital music formats can be used in compiling a digital music library.

Home Media Center,[42] a free and open source media server compatible with DLNA. Includes web interface for streaming content to web browser (Android, iOS, …), subtitles integration and Windows desktop streaming. This server is easy to use.

Jamcast,[43] a DLNA-compliant media server for Microsoft Windows that is capable of streaming any audio playing on the PC to DLNA devices.

PlayOn from MediaMall[46] appears to be a DMS, also capable of serving streamed internet media such as Netflix, Hulu, Google YouTube, CNN, ESPN.

PS3 Media Server,[47] an open source (GPLv2) DLNA compliant UPnP Media Server for the Sony PS3, written in Java, with the purpose of streaming or transcoding any kind of media files, with minimum configuration.

Serviio[48] is a UPnP/DLNA media server and works with any DLNA compliant device with the purpose of streaming or transcoding any kind of media files (TV, Sony PlayStation 3, etc.) and some other (MS Xbox 360). Frequently updated, has a good support community. Available on Windows, Apple Mac OSX, Linux and Synology NAS platforms.

Coherence is a framework written in Python to enable applications access to digital living network resources. As a stand-alone application it can act as a UPnP/DLNA media server, in combination with a supported client as a media renderer.

AllShare[54] (UPnP, DLNA), a Samsung-branded media server for MS Windows. Clients are also available for mobile Android devices. Effective for streaming content over a local network to Samsung devices, notably televisions.

KooRaRoo Media[55] (UPnP, DLNA, HTTP), a multimedia organizer and a media server for Windows. On-the-fly transcoding, supports multiple video/audio streams in files, includes a DMS (server) and a DMC (controller) with "play to" functionality. Works with all DLNA-compatible devices.

Pixel Media Server[56] is a DLNA-compliant digital media server for Android platform. It turns your phone/tablet into a DLNA media server for publishing content (image, audio, video) from your device to the DLNA home network.

Nero Media Home[57] is a UPnP/DLNA Media Server on the Windows platform, streaming music, videos, photos, and TV shows, It allows to play back your media files on most popular devices including Xbox and PlayStation.

ReadyMedia (formerly known as MiniDLNA)[58] is a simple open source media server software, with the aim of being fully compliant with UPnP/DLNA clients.